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"And I beheld, and heard the voice of one eagle flying through the midst of heaven, saying with a loud voice: Woe, woe, woe to the inhabitants of the earth....[Apocalypse (Revelation) 8:13]

Saturday, June 17, 2017

Attention and the Distraction Addiction

There are two ways to go through life: Mindfully or mindlessly. In
the first instance, we pay attention. We see things and notice them in
order to appreciate them. We hear things in order to understand them. We
seek to know things not superficially but in their wholeness. We live
in the present moment and experience the world with wonder, tasting its
mysteries with full appreciation.

In the second instance, we are distracted. We see things but do not
notice them. We hear things but do not understand them. All the
information of our senses is received with the bare minimum of
attention. Our whole life is a haze, a fragmented series of a barely
conscious sense impressions.

The first describes the mode of the poet who sees fully and feels
deeply. The second describes the frequently fragmented attention of
modern man, and this is in no small part due to omnipresent technology.

Technology and Attention

I possess a smartphone, and I there are frequently times I am
thankful for its benefits. Yet, as often as I am thankful, I am equally
disgusted with it. For my phone has a way of drawing me inevitably away
from the present moment. A brief consultation for a specific purpose
quickly finds me distracted by myriad pieces of information flowing at
me incessantly through a brightly colored screen. It is a machine
designed for one purpose—to absorb and hold my attention for as long as
possible.
Whether or not we realize it, our attention is now a commodity to be
bought and sold. We think we are mindlessly relaxing, scrolling through
our Instagram or Facebook feed. In reality, advertisers are purchasing
our attention and using the years of social data we have given them to
know what we want before we know we want it. And it works. It is nearly
irresistible. It is designed to be so.

Fragmentation and Augmentation

It could be argued legitimately that every technology has tradeoffs
and that internet enabled phones are no exception. The problem is,
digital devices are designed to fragment attention, where other
technologies are intended to augment it. An apt example is a book. A
book is actually a piece of technology for relaying information. After
the advent of the printing press, books became the most widely used
system of information exchange.
But reading is an entirely different experience than scrolling on
Facebook. Reading focuses your attention and draws you into a deep state
of flow—of concentration without effort. Reading causes you to pass
through the particular words into the realm of ideas and, in the case of
fiction, imagery and emotions. The whole structure of a book, from the
font to the layout of words on a page, is designed to aid and augment
concentration.
Digital devices, on the other hand, fragment attention. On opening
your smartphone, you are presented with a grid providing you with a
choice of applications you want to enter. Because there are options,
your attention is immediately pulled in different directions. Once you
enter an app, you are faced with a stream of information—whether it be a
list of emails, social media posts, or notifications of activity.
Each item presents a demand on your attention. It beckons you to
become aware of it and engage with it. It stimulates our desires and
teaches us to act on impulse. And because there is always something new,
our brains are soon trained to expect the reward of fresh stimulus.
Using such a device is rather like someone on a strict, gluten free diet
walking into a donut shop—resolve does not last long.

Struggle for Awareness

My point is not to denigrate technology. Devices such as smartphones
have indeed brought benefits to our lives. I would not own one if there
were not benefits to it. And yet, there is a very real sense in which
these devices have impoverished us in making us no longer aware of the
world around us. More often than not, we move through life in a
distracted haze of stimulation and response, neglecting the deeper
concentration needed for true contemplation. How many miracles, how many
shimmering wonders do we miss because we are lost in a two dimensional
screen?
We must resist mindlessness, and not by half measures. I believe we
have a very real duty to struggle against distraction. As Christians, we
are all called to be poets—not literally perhaps, but in the sense of
seeing fully and feeling deeply the mystery of things.
To quote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, the “world is charged with
the grandeur of God,” but without awareness, without attention, we
cannot experience this sacramental reality. We cannot receive it as the
gift that it is, with joy and wonder and gratitude, if we are not awake
enough to notice it. And not merely notice it in a superficial, cursory
manner, but truly contemplate it in its richness and beauty.
Our fragmented attention is causing us to miss out on a great deal of
joy. Let us then struggle against the world of artificiality that
beckons us and seeks to absorb and then shatter our attention. Let
us strive for mindfulness and not mindlessness. Let us return to reality
and receive the gift of creation with awe and thanksgiving and offer
for it a sacrifice of praise.

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“This Second Vatican Council Reform, since it has issued from Liberalism and from Modernism, is entirely corrupt; it comes from heresy and results in heresy, even if all its acts are not formally heretical. It is thus impossible for any faithful Catholic who is aware of these things to adopt this Reform, or to submit to it in any way at all. To ensure our salvation, the only attitude of fidelity to the Church and to Catholic doctrine, is a categorical refusal to accept the Reform.”

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Archbishop Lefebvre

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Archbishop Lefebvre

That Conciliar Church is a schismatic Church, because it breaks with the Catholic Church that has always been. It has its new dogmas, its new priesthood, its new institutions, its new worship, all already condemned by the Church in many a document, official and definitive.... The Church that affirms such errors is at once schismatic and heretical. This Conciliar Church is, therefore, not Catholic. To whatever extent Pope, Bishops, priests, or faithful adhere to this new Church, they separate themselves from the Catholic Church...

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Archbishop Lefebvre

“Well, we are not of this religion. We do not accept this new religion. We are of the religion of all time; we are of the Catholic religion. We are not of this 'universal religion' as they call it today-this is not the Catholic religion any more. We are not of this Liberal, Modernist religion which has its own worship, its own priests, its own faith, its own catechisms, its own Bible, the 'ecumenical Bible'-these things we do not accept."

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"I am worried by the Blessed Virgin's messages to Lucy of Fatima. This persistence of Mary about the dangers which menace the Church is a divine warning against the suicide of altering the Faith, in Her liturgy, Her theology and Her soul. … I hear all around me innovators who wish to dismantle the Sacred Chapel, destroy the universal flame of the Church, reject Her ornaments and make Her feel remorse for Her historical past."A day will come when the civilized world will deny its God, when the Church will doubt as Peter doubted. She will be tempted to believe that man has become God. In our churches, Christians will search in vain for the red lamp where God awaits them. Like Mary Magdalene, weeping before the empty tomb, they will ask, 'Where have they taken Him?'"

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St. Bernard:

Go forth confidently then, you knights, and repel the foes of the cross of Christ with a stalwart heart. Know that neither death nor life can separate you from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ, and in every peril repeat, "Whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." What a glory to return in victory from such a battle! How blessed to die there as a martyr! Rejoice, brave athlete, if you live and conquer in the Lord; but glory and exult even more if you die and join your Lord. Life indeed is a fruitful thing and victory is glorious, but a holy death is more important than either. If they are blessed who die in the Lord, how much more are they who die for the Lord!

How secure, I say, is life when death is anticipated without fear; or rather when it is desired with feeling and embraced with reverence! How holy and secure this knighthood and how entirely free of the double risk run by those men who fight not for Christ! Whenever you go forth, O worldly warrior, you must fear lest the bodily death of your foe should mean your own spiritual death, or lest perhaps your body and soul together should be slain by him.

Indeed, danger or victory for a Christian depends on the dispositions of his heart and not on the fortunes of war. If he fights for a good reason, the issue of his fight can never be evil; and likewise the results can never be considered good if the reason were evil and the intentions perverse. If you happen to be killed while you are seeking only to kill another, you die a murderer. If you succeed, and by your will to overcome and to conquer you perchance kill a man, you live a murderer. Now it will not do to be a murderer, living or dead, victorious or vanquished. What an unhappy victory--to have conquered a man while yielding to vice, and to indulge in an empty glory at his fall when wrath and pride have gotten the better of you!

But what of those who kill neither in the heat of revenge nor in the swelling of pride, but simply in order to save themselves? Even this sort of victory I would not call good, since bodily death is really a lesser evil than spiritual death. The soul need not die when the body does. No, it is the soul which sins that shall die.

The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear the sword in vain, for he is God's minister, for the punishment of evildoers and for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil. He is evidently the avenger of Christ towards evildoers and he is rightly considered a defender of Christians. Should he be killed himself, we know that he has not perished, but has come safely into port.

Once he finds himself in the thick of battle, this knight sets aside his previous gentleness, as if to say, "Do I not hate those who hate you, O Lord; am I not disgusted with your enemies?" These men at once fall violently upon the foe, regarding them as so many sheep. No matter how outnumbered they are, they never regard these as fierce barbarians or as awe-inspiring hordes. Nor do they presume on their own strength, but trust in the Lord of armies to grant them the victory.

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Saint Athanasius

"May God console you! ... What saddens you ... is the fact that others have occupied the churches by violence, while during this time you are on the outside. It is a fact that they have the premises – but you have the Apostolic Faith. They can occupy our churches, but they are outside the true Faith. You remain outside the places of worship, but the Faith dwells within you. Let us consider: what is more important, the place or the Faith?The true Faith, obviously. Who has lost and who has won in the struggle – the one who keeps the premises or the one who keeps the Faith? True, the premises are good when the Apostolic Faith is preached there; they are holy if everything takes place there in a holy way ..."You are the ones who are happy; you who remain within the Church by your Faith, who hold firmly to the foundations of the Faith which has come down to you from Apostolic Tradition. And if an execrable jealousy has tried to shake it on a number of occasions, it has not succeeded. They are the ones who have broken away from it in the present crisis. No one, ever, will prevail against your Faith, beloved Brothers. And we believe that God will give us our churches back some day. "Thus, the more violently they try to occupy the places of worship, the more they separate themselves from the Church. They claim that they represent the Church; but in reality, they are the ones who are expelling themselves from it and going astray. Even if Catholics faithful to Tradition are reduced to a handful, they are the ones who are the true Church of Jesus Christ."